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Five myths about Obama's first year in office | It has been nearly a year since Barack Obama was (sort of) sworn in as the 44th president of the United States. So what can his first year in office tell us about the next three? Most armchair historians say the first year of a presidency is a make-or-break opportunity for
an administration to assert control of Congress, achieve its legislative priorities
and impress the American people with its effectiveness. Many of Obama's supporters
also buy into this idea, but not the conservatives. The president's critics gleefully
compare his job approval numbers, which have steadily dipped during this first
year, to those of past presidents. They say these numbers show that the more people
get to know Obama, the less they like him -- and the less they will like him in
the years come. But a closer look at history suggests that both too much and too
little can be made of a president's first year in office. Here, according to the
Washington Post, are five myths that surfaced between January and December 2009:
1. In the afterglow of the 2008 elections, when the country had not only overwhelmingly
elected Obama president but had also handed Democrats wide majorities in the House
and Senate, many in the Democratic Party had the sense that after years of frustration,
a progressive agenda would finally be enacted. Or not. While Congress has passed
several of Obama's agenda items -- the expansion of the Children's Health Insurance
Program; the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which makes it easier for women and
others to sue for wage discrimination; the economic stimulus package -- it has
been more of a roadblock than a thoroughfare on other priorities, including health-care
reform. Although health-care legislation now looks likely to pass, the president
has acknowledged that its path through Congress has been neither as speedy nor
as smooth as he had hoped. The past two U.S. presidents also found that having
their party in control of Congress didn't guarantee anything: Bill Clinton couldn't
get health-care reform through a Democratic-led Congress in 1993 and George W.
Bush's efforts at reforming Social Security following his 2004 re-election failed
miserably, despite Republicans in charge of Congress. Nothing gets done legislatively
after the first year. 2. Most presidents consider their first year in office their
best chance to enact their most ambitious legislative priorities. It's far enough
ahead of the midterm elections to get nervous members of Congress on board and
three years before the next presidential election -- so they'll have time to reposition
themselves if support for their agenda goes south. Obama clearly saw things through
this first-year-or-bust prism as he simultaneously pushed health-care and carbon
cap-and-trade legislation. The problem with treating the first year as a be-all
and end-all? It ain't necessarily so. The best predictor of legislative momentum
isn't the political calendar but the events that motivate public cries for action.
Your party's base abandons you. 3. The bases of the two parties don't understand
or care much about the sausage-making aspects of how policy is constructed in
Washington . They want action and they want it now. And so when Obama didn't manage
to bring all U.S. troops home from Iraq, reform the health-care system and abandon
the "don't ask, don't tell" policy for gays in the military (among other things)
in his first week in office, there was consternation within the Democratic base.
But that consternation rarely turns into large-scale abandonment. President Jimmy
Carter was widely disliked among the party's base following his victory in 1976
-- so much so that Sen. Ted Kennedy challenged him in 1980. Carter still won.
Clinton 's " Third Way " centrism didn't sit well with the party's base but he
still was reelected in 1996 and party liberals became his staunchest defenders
during impeachment proceedings. Ultimately, members of the base come to understand
that they are better off with a president who agrees with them most if not all
of the time than one from the opposite party who will work against their priorities.
The first 100 days don't really matter. 4. The first 100 days do matter, and for
one simple reason: You never get a second chance to make a first impression. The
transition from candidate to president turns out to be difficult for even the
most skilled politician. At precisely the moment when all eyes are on the new
commander in chief, the ideas and optimism of the campaign trail crash into the
reality of how things are done in Washington . Famously influential first 100
days like those of Roosevelt, who used his initial few months in office to grow
government at a rapid rate to try to pull the country out of the Great Depression,
and Reagan, whose first 100 days were dominated by an effort to undo many of the
government-growing policies put in place five decades before by Roosevelt, were
marked by intense activity, broad change and wide-ranging political consequences.
The Obama presidency began with a flurry of accomplishments -- passage of a $787
billion economic stimulus package, approval of his $3.6 trillion budget and the
allocation of money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program to bail out the nation's
banks -- that shaped everything that came after. But the first 100 days can also
matter in ways no one anticipates: Although Obama seemed to defy political gravity
in his first few months, the actions he took during that period led to a rallying
of the Republican base and an erosion of support among independents. After the
high of winning the election, your approval ratings have nowhere to go but down.
5. Most presidents arrive in office with approval ratings in the 60s, as the American
public -- an optimistic bunch -- proves itself willing to give the newly elected
leader the benefit of the doubt. Where the numbers go from there depends on what
the president does. Bush, who came into office on the shakiest of electoral grounds,
pursued a decidedly conservative agenda on the home front and a go-it-alone approach
to foreign policy that (understatement alert!) didn't sit well with the American
people. Except for an extended bounce after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, his public
support steadily declined over the years, from 57 percent when he entered office
to 34 percent when he left. Clinton , on the other hand, encountered some ups
and downs at the start of his presidency, but because of centrist policies and
a thriving economy, he managed to end his presidency with two-thirds of the country
approving of the job he had done. Reagan followed an arc similar to Clinton 's.
He took office with the lowest approval rating (51 percent) of any U.S. president
in the modern era. Eight years later, because of a popular foreign policy, tax
cuts and a sunny leadership style, he left office with a sky-high approval rating
second only to Clinton's among post-World War II presidents. |
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